Bradford City think that Kyle Bennett’s should not be banned for three games for hitting another footballer in the neck in Tuesday night’s game with Preston North End and the crazy thing is that the Football Association agree.

In the video of Bennett’s clash with Neil Kilkenny – the less said about his actions the better but nothing he doe impacts that Bennett has done – the Bradford City player very clearly strikes Kilkenny. If you can’t see it watch it again until you do and you will.

He does not strike him hard, he does not wound or injury him but he does strike him and that is the violent conduct that the player was dismissed for. This is as open and shut a case as you could expect to see in football and referee Stuart Attwell has rightly sent him off.

But the FA have decided that Bennett should serve only a one match and not a three match ban and the indication from the Bradford City website is that that is because he made “limited” contact or – if you will – he hit him that hard.

Consider that again for a moment.

Bennett hit Kilkenny (again, I’m not talking about Kilkenny’s antics) which was judged and rejudged as violent conduct and no one contests that yet the FA have decided that it is not the absolute of violent conduct that he is punished for but rather the effectiveness of it.

In April this year the same FA banned Liverpool striker Luis Suarez for 10 games for biting Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic. Ivanovic suffered no lasting effects from the nibble and I have deeper cuts on my arm from my kitten Leo but nevertheless that was judged on the violence of the action not the result.

Which is not to say I’m not glad that Bennett has only got a one game and not a three game ban but I would be incensed if this ruling went the other way and someone were allowed to get a lesser ban for hitting a City player softly.

In fact I recall Etienne Verveer playing for City at Huddersfield Town and taking a dive after Tom Cowan swung a fist at at him. The referee saw the dive but sent Cowan off because you are not allowed to throw punches even if they miss.

Both John Finnigan of Cheltenham and Ívar Ingimarsson of Reading were left complaining that Dean Windass had done something unspeakable to them that provoked red cards they got for hitting the City player but provocation is not a defence against a charge of violent conduct either.

Those were good decisions based on the clear statement in football that for all the wrongs you may perceive the game is a game and it is not for players to hand out justice with violence. We are not talking about questionable elbows or hard tackles. We are talking arms and hands striking above the shoulder. We are talking hitting someone else.

If – in football – you have to resort to throwing fists during a game then you get sent off and you get punished with severity. The action is punitive – not something I always like – and is their to tell the player not to start fighting while playing a game.

The FA have undermined what should be a clear statement but the FA’s approach to discipline is to underline strange and unusual punishments.

I’m glad Bennett will be back sooner but I cannot agree with the idea that obvious violent conduct can be downgraded for how poor it was carried out or how little damage was done.

I’m swithering on this one. My reaction at the time was that it was an over-reaction by the referee, and one largely caused by the PNE player’s antics. Having read your piece on it, though, I take your point about the letter of the footballing law. However, the reality is that many refereeing decisions are not so clear-cut, and often because things are not completely black and white. There does have to be some common sense involved somewhere doesn’t there? The footage clearly shows that neither player used a fist for example, which says something about their level of (non)intent. And how many times do we see referees fail to act when there has clearly been a significant, perhaps even dangerous, incident?

Where is the line drawn between a punch/slap and a bit of a pat or shove? There was a corner a few minutes after the sending off where a good 6 or 8 players were pushing each other around with a lot more force and “violence” than either of the sent off players had, only nobody rolled about on the floor holding their face at the corner.

Firstly pushing someone softly with an open hand is not a sending off offence. We see players pushing each other in this way every week and very, very few of them are ever sent off. To borrow some legal terminology – the laws of the game may say it is a red car but case law (i.e. the way those laws are interpted by the judge/referee) is very clear that it is not.

You may say that football should be run by the laws of the game but it simply isn’t – it is run by case law. This is why it is OK for a defender to shield a ball out of play, why a foul on the half-line is not a foul in the penalty area, why an aerial challenge on a keeper is virtually always a foul…

The real world works this way too – case law is used to shape laws, to remove their hard ages, to accept that there is some grey in between the black and white.

My second point, and where I do agree with you, is that the reduction to one game is ridiculous. Either both players were sent off for violent conduct (and should be banned for 3 games) or they weren’t (and should have their red cards rescinded). I don’t get the “it was not-as-violent conduct” argument in the slightest.

If that type of contact is a red card offence then there’d be a red card for half the players in the penalty area when jostling their positions for a corner. It quite clearly wasn’t violent conduct. And the FA obviously agreed when they recinded the Preston player’s red card. His play acting however could well have been awarded with a yellow.

For me the problem is that they have decided that this was not violent conduct but it is still charged as such. In reducing the ban they are creating the precedent that there are gradations of violent conduct. That is what I do not like.